Broken and Burned
by Silvyia
Summary: She was a hero by chance after she saved a woman's life and lost her own in the ensuing fight. Then she was reborn into a world where being a hero was expected. Maybe she didn't want to be a hero again. (Morally-grey OC, starts before canon and changes the details from day one. Rated M for violence, death, swearing, and future romance.)
1. Broken

_I never wanted to be a hero._

Connie repeats those words to herself over and over again, bleeding out on the cold concrete ground. She was outside somewhere, just around the bend near a BBQ joint she would often go to, in a dark alleyway being pelted by rain. The ground was wet and cold, but as her blood spilled out in a steady pace, her back to the ground felt almost warmed by the thick liquid. How ironic was that? The life leaving her body made her feel warmth.

She would laugh if she weren't dying.

It all happened so fast – too fast. She was in the restaurant, having just bought some take-out food to take home. Tomorrow was the day she turned in her resignation at work, and she'd wanted to celebrate a bit early at finding a better proposition elsewhere. She adored the people she worked with dearly, as if they were her family, but who would pass up the chance to travel and follow their passion, making art in her case, for a boring desk job?

She supposed the phrase "never celebrate too early" really had some meaning to it after all.

But still – everything had been going smoothly until she'd left the building. One hand full of takeout, the other with her phone out as she checked her social media timelines for notifications, and suddenly she heard a muffled shouting a short distance away. Her heart hammered in her chest, her eyes shooting up from the blinding light of her phone to the darkness of the alley just beyond her, and she paused as she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

She heard another muffled scream, a little more faint this time, and several gruff voices muttering to each other. She shut off her phone, took a step forward, then told herself she was being a moron. She turns her phone back on, dialed up 9-1-1 on it, and took another step, listening to the line dial for a short moment.

Just as somebody picked up on the other end, she rounded the corner to find a scene she would probably never forget. Not this lifetime, and not the next.

Four people in dark clothing – it looked to be three men and one woman – all huddled in a semi-circle around a woman on the ground, with one more person sitting atop her stomach and holding their hands over the woman's face to quiet her muffled kicking and screaming.

She drops her take-out bag in shock, her heart beating so fast in her chest she swore it must have skipped a beat or two.

"_Hello? What is the address and emergency?"_ The voice asked again over the phone, a young-ish sounding man with a smooth voice. She hadn't even heard him asking the first time.

All heads turned to her as her bag fell to the ground. For a moment, there's complete silence.

The person on top of the woman – she sees now it was another woman wearing a long black dress – stands up slowly, and Connie begins speaking into the phone very quickly, telling the man on the other side the address of where she was and begging for help –

She hears a gun go off. She falls to the ground, feeling as if somebody had just punched her in the gut. She doesn't even scream, because for a few seconds she doesn't even feel the pain – just the impact. Her phone shatters when it falls beside her, and she could faintly hear the man calling for her and asking what was going on. She looks down, and there in the center of her nice blue shirt is a little puddle of red, tinted purple from the blue dye of her shirt, slowly spreading out and soaking her clothing.

She finally calls out for help loudly, feeling the tears fall from her face as the men and woman in the alleyway began scattering in fear of being caught. Only one stayed behind.

The woman in the long black dress pointed her gun at Connie again, and pauses as Connie brings her hands up to cover herself and began crying for mercy.

"Please, _please, _don't shoot me! Please, oh God," she pleaded and begged. She wasn't a religious person, but right then and there she began praying for help – for anything other than death.

The woman laughed a bit, muttered some words in a language Connie didn't understand, and turned around to face the other woman already on the ground. She could see now that the other woman was bloodied up a bit, like she'd been beaten up pretty good, but otherwise unharmed. Her short blond hair was a mess, and her makeup was smeared from tears and fighting back. She was wearing a dress as well, a light shade of blue that matched Connie's shirt.

When the woman in the long black dress pointed her gun down at the woman in blue, Connie's blood ran cold. Her body felt so cold and she imagined she was hearing static, as if she was a computer that was malfunctioning.

She didn't feel anything, then.

She didn't feel the tips of her fingers as they pushed against the ground.

She didn't feel her legs, scrambling for purchase on the ground as it began raining.

She didn't feel the gunshot wound in her stomach as it bled out.

She didn't feel anything as she collided with the woman in the black dress, throwing the both of them forward just far enough to the side that they didn't land on top of the woman in the blue dress. Her arm, bare from the short-sleeved shirt and wrapped around the woman's midsection as she had barreled into her, sings out in pain as it makes contact with the rough pavement harshly when they both fall to the ground.

She finally feels again, like awakening after a long, long sleep.

The rain is heavy and fast, loud in her ears as she shivers from the cold. Another gunshot goes off, but she sees that it was just from the woman falling over – nobody gets shot from the gun firing.

The shock of the act wears off on the woman in the black dress and she shouts something angrily – is that Japanese? – as she scratches with her pretty nails at Connie's skin to get her to leg go. She can only hold on for a second longer before her pain tolerance reaches its threshold and she cries out and tries to jump away. She's tripped by a sweeping leg in black laces, and she falls. Her head collides with the ground, and she doesn't move to get up again.

She could see, blearily, that the woman in the blue dress was gone.

With a sinking heart and a cold fear in her eyes, she realizes that her act of heroism was not returned. She'd been left to fend for herself there, in that dark alley as it rained and the woman in black screamed something cruel as she shot off two more rounds. One to the chest, one to the stomach again.

The woman in black takes a moment to compose herself, breathing heavily, and she turns and begins walking off as swiftly as she could in her high heels.

Connie wishes she could feel nothing again. It hurts everywhere. It's so cold, and the ground was hard and scratchy against her bare arms. She hears the rain hitting the pavement, blocking out the sounds of curious passer-bys coming over to see what the commotion was. She couldn't hear them gasp in horror at the sight and flee – yet again, she was left alone. Nobody to help her.

So there she lay, in that cold, dark alleyway listening to herself die, feeling the warmth of her blood seeping out of her body.

She hears, briefly, a siren. She sees the red and blue bouncing off the walls around her.

Then she is nothing more.

For a long, long time, there is nothing. She floats in nothing, like a swimming pool but without the currents of motion or the soothing coolness of water around her body. She floats for a time that she can't understand, and she feels nothing. She sees nothing. She hears nothing. She is nothing.

A light, then –

Blinding bright –

Calling, reaching out to her –

She reaches back, finds her voice to call back –

_Please, please I want to live – _

Suddenly she is _bathed _in the bright light, and it's not nothing anymore. Her eyes screw shut and she opens her mouth and she _screams._ It's so bright and blinding that she can't seem to open her eyes to look around, and her body feels so frail and weak that she can hardly move her arms to flail about. There is warmth that comes with the light, and it makes her so happy that she cries out again in joy. Hands hold her, and she is moved from one grasp to another. She feels safe, warm – she feels _alive again. _

"_Kon'nichiwa, koneko..." _A soft, nearly heavenly voice calls out to her in a tired, weak voice. She doesn't understand the language or recognize the voice, but she doesn't care at the time. She feels alive again.

She opens her mouth and can let nothing out but a wailing cry. The hands holding her feel too big, like she'd shrunk or was being held by a giant, but they held her softly and the chest she was pressed against laughed gently.

"_Nante ōgoeda! Totemo osoroshī..." _The voice cooed out in a sweet voice.

"_Anata wa kanojo no namae o shitte imasu ka?" _Another voice, unfamiliar to her ears, speaks up from a short distance away. The hands holding her still, then hold her a little bit tighter until she kicks a bit to give herself more space in the warm embrace. She feels the body move around a bit.

"_Akemi. Himura Akemi." _

She recognizes a name – who are they talking about? Do they know what her name is? Now that she could think again, beyond the lung-rattling scream of _I'm alive again_, she finally realizes that maybe what's going on right now isn't normal. If she had been shot three times, wouldn't she be in the hospital now? Why couldn't she open her eyes? Why was everything so blindingly bright, and why could she hear not only the heartbeat next to her ear as she was pressed up against a warm chest, but also another two beating hearts further away from her?

She feels a finger poke at her nose, and she tries to move away from it. _"Kikoemasu ka? Anata no namae wa Akemidesu! Utsukushī chīsana eiyū!" _Connie stops trying to follow the conversation. It was hurting her head to try to understand everything going on at once.

More talking happens, the poking and prodding stops, and Connie tries to fight the sleep trying to claim her desperately. She didn't want to sleep – she had just woken up after so long in the dark. Her chest churned with fear and she let out another wail, reaching out to grasp whatever, whoever, she could to try to tell them, _don't make me sleep, please, I only just woke up – _

And before long, she is in the darkness once again.

* * *

((A/N: Hello and welcome to my BNHA fic! This is the first time I've written something for BNHA, but I've loved the fandom for a long time so here I go.. I have always written good, heroic characters who sacrifice themselves for the sake of being the savior, so I'm trying my hand at a character who feels mixed about the whole story of BNHA. She isn't evil but she isn't all good either... Morally-grey is a good description of her feelings towards this whole shebang.

The Japanese turns into English in chapter 3, but until then the translations will be down below here!

Translations:

"_Kon'nichiwa, koneko..." _= "Hello, my little kitten..."

"_Nante ōgoeda! Totemo osoroshī..." _= "What a loud roar! So fearsome..."

"_Anata wa kanojo no namae o shitte imasu ka?"_ = "Do you have a name for her yet?"

"_Akemi. Himura Akemi." _= Her name roughly translates into "Bright/Beautiful Hero"

"_Kikoemasu ka? Anata no namae wa Akemidesu! Utsukushī chīsana eiyū!"_ = "Do you hear that? Your name is Akemi! Beautiful little hero!"

Thanks you for your interest in my story! Read and review!))


	2. Awaken

The shock comes almost two years later.

Well, _a shock _comes almost two years later.

The first shock comes a week after she had "awoken again". For a week straight, she came and went from consciousness to darkness to consciousness and back again. She remembered bits and pieces of it, but held on to none of those memories as they meant nothing to her.

Then almost eight days passes, roughly as she was still bad at judging the passage of time, and she finally opens her eyes – both metaphorically and literally.

She could see _so much._

She laid on her back in a bed of some sort, staring up at the ceiling above her in the darkness. There were pretty paintings along the walls, of dancing children in multiple colors and animals of all shapes and sizes grazing peacefully in a cartoonish art style. Straight above her was what looked like a baby mobile, with cats chasing birds going around in a slow, lazy circle. She watched it for a moment, seeing every little crack and chip of paint flaking off of it, until her eyes began feeling heavy again and she looked away quickly to the side –

The sides of her crib.

…._Crib..? _

Her eyes widen a bit and she reaches an arm out to touch the wooden bars holding her inside the baby's bed. She sees her arm – she sees a small, weak arm with baby fat – and she pauses. Her arm shakes from the strain of trying to hold it up for more than a few seconds, and it falls to the bed with a small _thump. _

A baby... Inside of a crib... Underneath a mobile and in a room painted with childish drawings in multiple colors...

She couldn't help it – she opened her mouth and let out a wail.

_No way, there was no way I'm a literal baby in a crib right now – this has to be a dream! A stupid dream, I'm asleep again and I'll wake up soon – _she tried to scream aloud. All that came out were wails that felt too scratchy and they grated on her ears. She felt her hair rustle a bit at the top of her head, and before she can even think about it for another moment, the door to the bedroom opens and a figure walks into the room sluggishly.

The hallway beyond the door was dark as well, no lights under the closed doors beyond the hallway – it was probably late in the night, then. A man approached her bed – _her crib _– while rubbing at his eyes and yawning widely. He walked forward silently until he reached the edge of her bed, and he smiled down at her with a tired face, bags under his eyes.

His eyes were a golden yellow, and his pupils seem to dilate a bit as he looks down at her with a soft smile. She had never met somebody with such strikingly bright eyes before, and she had a sneaking suspicion that maybe he wore contacts to get a color that bright it nearly seemed to glow in the dark of her bedroom.

Beyond that, he looked exhausted. His black hair was long enough to reach his ears, somewhat curly but not by much, and he ran a hand through the disheveled locks for a moment. His skin was a pale white like he'd burst into ashes if he walked out into the sun, and it only made the violet bags under his eyes stand out all the more. He looked tall – but then again, everything looked huge from where she laid in a _baby's crib_ – and he had a few dark freckles speckled across his cheeks as he leaned down to her level. There were two lumps in his dark hair that seemed to move for a moment, but she doesn't catch what they are before he is speaking again.

"_Kon'nichiwa chīsana neko. Mata onaka ga suita?" _He asks her in a whisper as he picks her up easily, holding her to his chest and using one hand to carry the weight of her head. She had to admit, he was very good at holding babies properly.

She understood right away he was not speaking English and, in fact, he was speaking Japanese – she remembers the woman in black and it makes her wail again – but she understood nothing of what he said to her.

He held her close to his chest and she quieted down in the comfort and warmth of his body heat. His shirt, dark and long-sleeved, was very soft to the touch and she grabbed a fistful of it with her tiny hand. He hears him chuckle at her movement, and he walks over to one side of the room where there seemed to be a small 'station' of sorts set up for taking care of a baby.

When he placed her down and picked up a small diaper, she realized what he planned on doing.

She kicked at him and cried out again, trying to convey without words that she absolutely _refused _to be changed.

Long story short, he did it anyway. He was very confused by her sudden change in behavior, but he effortlessly removes the old cloth and ties on a new one with only one hand – the other being used to hold down her feet as she tried to kick and claw at him. It was humiliating, and by the end of it she was left fuming and trying to cross her chubby arms at him. He found it absolutely hilarious, and chuckled down at her with those bright eyes, showing teeth in his display of amusement – sharp in the corners, sharper than they should be.

She pauses in her temper tantrum to look up at him, _truly _look at him for the first time that night. His eyes were a bright yellow color, his canine teeth were as sharp as a hungry predator, and his hair... His black hair parted a bit as two feline ears atop his head poked out from under the curls. He frowns down at her then, hiding his sharp teeth as he picks her up again. A lithe black tail swished back and forth behind him.

"_Naze anata wa ima shizukana nodesu ka, koneko? Tsukaremashita ka?"_ He speaks and she hears him but doesn't _understand. _

That night, she not only understood that she had somehow, by some act of a deity she didn't understand, been reborn – she'd also found out that her new father was not quite human. She would see traces of this for the next few years, not just in the obvious physical aspects of it, but in every way possible.

The way he tracked moving people around him like he was stalking prey, how his pupils would shrink into slits when he got frustrated or felt threatened by something, and how they would dilate again to nearly fill his golden gaze with blackness when he looked down at her with such fondness and love – the same with her new mother, who, by all intents and purposes, was a normal human being. She had no animal instincts in her, had no animal parts on her body either. It was just her father that seemed so odd and out of place to her.

Her mother never seemed bothered by it, as if it was perfectly normal to her.

Her mother, with her long, wavy brown hair and warm green eyes. Her skin was a darker tone than her father's was. While his was a pale white, hers was a richer brown color with a beauty mark just above her left eye. She was shorter than her husband, and incredibly beautiful. She often wore bright yellows and golden browns, colors that complimented her natural beauty well.

She remembered her mother's sweet voice and warmth from that first day – when she had been reborn. And over the years, her mother and father taught her to speak Japanese bit by bit, but always one word that they repeated day after day.

_Akemi. _

_Himura Akemi. _

She knew it was a name.

She knew, now, that it was _her _name.

Her knowledge of the Japanese culture was slim to none, but she still knew that they often introduced themselves last-name first and first-name last. Her family name, then, had to be Himura, while her personal name was Akemi.

It had a nice ring to it, she supposed. It sounded sweet, almost gentle.

After she learned about her new name – and only _then _– did she seem to finally, _finally, _realize what was going on around her.

She had died saving a stranger, a stranger who had left her behind to die alone the first opportunity she got while other strangers all clambered by, seeing her pain but doing nothing to help her as they simply went on their ways. They saw her pain, they saw her suffering, and they simply walked on.

Then she had been reborn, somehow, in some way. Her new mother was sweet and gentle, and her father was something just beyond human, tall and strong with the instincts and senses of a predator ready to strike.

For just a moment, Connie and Akemi coexisted. Connie cried out in pain, begging to be set free from the shackles of the death she'd been dealt, knowing that people had seen her agony and left her to settle in it alone. Akemi was a little girl who held curiosity for the world and wanted to learn more about the society she found herself in. She loved her parents dearly and wanted nothing more than to make them happy.

For just a moment, they clashed. They could not both exist. Not together.

Connie's painful anger could not exist alongside Akemi's innocent gentleness.

And after that swift moment passed, Connie conceded defeat, for how could a woman who had lived for thirty-two years deny a life to a child just born? The sweet little innocence of Akemi paused for another moment, longer than the first, before it welcomed the pain of Connie into its arms willingly.

Instead of coexisting, instead of killing off one for the other to live, they merged and became one.

Akemi was, from then on, a sweet young girl with the memories of an aged, painful death.

And she was determined to live this life differently than the last.

* * *

((A/N: I pretty much post these chapters as soon as I'm done writing them, so if you ever see a mistake in them please let me know! I'll correct them as soon as I can! Also, we're going to just breeze right through her younger years for a few chapters so we can get to her becoming a hero.

Translations:

"_Kon'nichiwa chīsana neko. Mata onaka ga suita?"_ = "Hello again little cat. Hungry again are we?"

_"Naze anata wa ima shizukana nodesu ka, koneko? Tsukaremashita ka?"_ = "Why are you quiet now, kitten? Are you tired?"

Thanks for reading! Read and review!))


	3. Learning

Review Responses: Wow, I didn't expect to get a couple of reviews this early on! Thank you for the two people who reviews and expressed interest in my story already! ShadowQueen46 and TheKursed, y'all make my heart sing, as well as everybody who's favorited and followed the story so far! I love you all! ;u; Enjoy this chapter!

* * *

She spends the next year after that devoting herself to just learning this new language. Akemi imagined that learning a language at all must be difficult, but learning to speak Japanese after she had all the memories of speaking English for thirty-two years? Well, you know what they say.

Old dogs are morons.

She learns, shakily, day by day, to speak in somewhat-coherent sentences. By the time her third birthday had come and gone, she was standing and walking about, babbling words to her parents for somewhat understandable requests and, when she was in a picky mood, demands.

Funnily enough, the first time she'd ever seen herself in a mirror in this world was after her third year of this "new" life. She supposed she would look the same as she had in the previous world, in her previous life, and so she had never bothered asking for a mirror or looking into reflective surfaces. She was wrong.

If anything... She looked fairly like her new father.

She stands before the reflective mirror in the bathroom, having climbed on top of the sink to reach it – and while she knew her mother would have a heart attack if she saw her balancing on the edge of the counter to look at her reflection, she was too curious about her new look.

She'd noticed right away her enhanced senses – the way she could see every crack in the walls if she focused on them, the way she seemed to register and remember people by their smells, the way she could hear her mother walking around the house no matter how quiet she was trying to be in the dead of night – _but never her father, she could never hear him even when he was at ease at home_ – and how much more she seemed to be able to _taste _the food she ate.

Perhaps because she had the qualities of a cat – the same as her father did.

She had noticed the tail for a while, of course. It would often move without her meaning to, so she would sometimes trip on it or step on her own tail from time to time, and she then cried and wailed for her parents to kiss her booboo better. The rest of her appearance had been a surprise however.

Her hair was pitch black and, while mostly wavy like her mother's hair was, it curled at the ends like her father's did. It was still short considering how young she was, and it looked just like her father's hairstyle did. Two ears, the same dark color as the rest of her hair was, peaked out from underneath the waves in her hair to twitch a bit as the house settled and let out a groan. They were small, fitting for a child her age.

Her skin tone was a mix between her mother's darker brown and her father's pale white, settling somewhere in the middle on a warm olive color. She had no freckles like her father did, but her eyes shone the same golden yellow. She peered closer into the mirror, climbing forward on her hands and sitting right in the sink, and looked closely into her golden eyes. Her pupils dilate to accommodate the closeness as she looked at herself, and she gasped a bit as she watched it move the way a cat's eye would when focusing.

Her eyes turned downward, and she spots her mouth. She had gone through the teething stage a while back – thank the heavens that was over, it had been nothing but pain and itchy gums for far too long – and she peered down at her teeth. She pulls her mouth open wide with her fingers, eyes widening at the sight of her feline teeth.

They weren't as sharp as her father's were, or as long considering how young her body currently was – but the canines in the corners were noticeably sharper than the rest of her teeth.

She hears a sound, a pair of feet moving through the house quickly. She watches her ears move in tune with the footsteps, moving about as if they were following the sound through the walls. She knows it must be her mother, as she would have never heard her father coming. She filed away a small note to make sure to ask him to teach her how to be so silently stealthy at some point.

Right as she shut the metaphorical cabinet on that note filed away, her mother opens the door slowly and peeks into the room, checking behind the door for something – most likely making sure Akemi wasn't sitting behind the door as it opened – and she finally notices her daughter sitting in the sink.

For a second, neither of them move as they stare at each other. Then her mother moves forward with such speed that Akemi nearly doesn't see her move, and she lifts her daughter out of the sink and into her arms. Interesting, the speed with which she had moved... It almost seemed too fast to Akemi, but then again, she was just figuring out she was a literal cat-human-thing...

"Akemi!" She calls out in a worried-but-scolding tone. "You should be in bed! You scared me when you weren't in your room!"

Her knowledge of the language really had come such a long way.

"I'm sowwy, Mama," Akemi responds, wrapping her arms around her mother's neck. She still hadn't learned to properly pronounce her r's, and her voice still seemed to hold an odd accent borrowed over from the English left in her memory, but she got her message across just fine. Her parents always assured her the accent was just because she was still learning to pronounce things right, and that it would go away with time. She doubted it, but nodded her head along to their words anyway.

"Oh, darling," she cooed quietly, patting Akemi's hair soothingly. Akemi twists in her mother's hold, trying to turn to see the mirror again. For a moment, her mother holds onto her tightly as if she thought her daughter was trying to hop out of her grasp.

"Weflection," Akemi points behind her, staring into her mother's soft green eyes.

Her mother stares for a moment, then smiles. "Oh, that's a very big word you just said, Akemi! Where did you learn that word from, hm? Has Papa been reading to you lately?" Then she turns around and walks out of the bathroom, and Akemi frowns grumpily into her mother's hair, her black tail flicking a bit restlessly.

Despite that little hiccup, the rest of the year goes rather smoothly. A month later she learns that the reason her father goes away for long hours of the day was because he had a 'big, important job to do', according to her mother. She learns to not call her mother and father by their first names, Aiko and Katashi respectively, or it would break their hearts to think their little girl was angry at them and stopped calling them Mama and Papa.

She runs around with her father through the house, playing hide-and-seek with him and pouting when he catches her every time.

"I hear you, little hunter," he would whisper to her right before snatching her up off the ground with a playful growl. She would squeal and then grin, laughing loudly. Her mother would smile from where she stood, coming over to take Akemi from his hands and give her a warm kiss to her temple and tell her to wash up for dinner.

She easily spent the most time with her mother. She wasn't aware of whatever job her father had that was so big and important, but it took up a lot of his time and he was gone for most of the days on most weeks. On the few occasions he had a break from work, he'd spend the whole day with her to let her mother rest. They would go out shopping together, take a walk in the park, he'd cook for both of 'his ladies' – as he called her and her mother – and at the end of the day, he would let her pick out any book she wanted to and read her to sleep.

The day he had first taken her out to the store with her, she had stared in absolute wonder at the world around her.

Not only did the buildings look big and more advanced than what she remembered from her last life – not quite futuristic like flying cars and floating buildings, but there were holographs floating about every now and then, and the buildings looked simply more... advanced, including more secure – but she also saw more and more people who were... not quite human.

At first, she only noticed the obvious ones. The ones who were abnormal at first glance, like her father was.

Some men had big green scales covering their bodies and sharp claws on their hands, and some women were seven feet tall and had slithering tongues peeking out of their mouths every now and again to taste the air.

She stared and stared until somebody noticed and waved hello at her with a small smile, showing rows upon rows of sharp, jagged teeth that looked like they belonged to a shark. He walked off, pulling his scarf tighter over the gill-like slits on either side of his neck.

Eventually, her father paps her lightly on the head and tells her, "Now, now Akemi, staring at people like us is rude. You might not mind it, but some people feel bad about the way they look around here. Let's be nicer, okay?"

She twisted in her baby chair in the shopping basket, looking at him with wide, curious golden eyes.

"People like us?" She asked, tripping over her American accent to pronounce the words correctly.

He smiled at her. "Heteromorphic quirks, little hunter. You aren't old enough for even kindergarten yet, so it's alright if you're confused about it."

She turned forwards in her seat again. Some of the bigger words he'd used had flown right over her head, but the word _heteromorphic _stayed stuck, glued tightly to her filing cabinet of sticky notes and thoughts.

"Papa?" She asks after a moment of quiet, contemplative thought.

"Hm?" He hummed in response, examining the calories on a box of puffed cereal before setting it back down with a frown at the price.

"What's a quirk?"

She didn't regret asking the question, but she sort-of regretted the nearly four hour answer she'd received from him. He had gone on for hour upon hour about what quirks were, how they started, where they originated from, and when he got home and unpacked the groceries, he still wasn't done. More than half of his answers flew past her as she tried to understand his words, but she got the gist of it.

Basically... super powers.

She lived in a world with mutants and super people.

And, well, after that day, she was much more interested in learning the language further and taking more walks with her parents. She started paying more and more attention to the people around her, and at some point when she turned four years old – in body at least – she got enrolled in a kindergarten, where she was promised by her tearful parents at the gates of the school that she would learn everything she had questions about there.

She wasn't sad to see them go, but she was nervous to finally be without them after spending the last four years of her life with them in her immediate vicinity.

She held the straps of her cat-head shaped lunchbox nervously. A bell rang, and she tensed at the loud noise. A tall lady with the face of a crocodile ushered her inside swiftly, sending her encouraging words that often drifted off with a hiss as they walked.

For the most part, most of the people in the class looked relatively normal. Some of them had odd hair colors or odd eye colors, but none of them were _heteromorphic _like she was, or like her father was, or like the nice lady with the crocodile face had been.

She sat down slowly between two children somewhere in the middle of the room as they began a lesson with a normal-looking man who had a kind smile on his face. Occasionally he would stretch out the tips of his fingers to point at something further away on a blackboard than he could reach normally. Akemi payed astute attention for a short while before her thoughts drifted elsewhere when she realized they weren't teaching about quirks or the world around them, they were simply learning basic counting and their ABCs.

With Connie's memories still in the back of her head, Akemi knew the answers already. At first she didn't raise her hand to answer the questions, but as children around her began getting the answers wrong, she would respond with the right answer.

Eventually, when the teachers would ask a question, they looked to her first to see if she knew the answer. She always did. This level of learning was basic, and easy, and she found herself being complimented and smiled at all day by teachers who thought she was a genius. They gave her a few extra questions sometimes, which was a bit unfair but too easy to complain about, and they'd coo and clap at her excitedly when she did them correctly.

She smiled at their praises, her face going a bit red as she realized how nice it was to be thought of as a genius.

The day ended soon enough, and she skipped all the way out to her mother – her father was, as she had guessed he would be, away at work – with a wide grin on her face. A teacher accompanied her.

"Oh, hello little kitten! Did you have a nice day at school, hm?" Her mother cooed at her as she bent down to lift her daughter high into the air, then hold her close to her chest with a bright smile. Akemi nodded her head and watched her short black locks bounce with the movement.

"Oh, your little girl is such a smart one!" The teacher that had followed her outside complimented her, and Akemi grinned and buried her face in her mother's hair, breathing in the familiar scent deeply to hide her red face. "She got every question correct today! Did you and your husband already start her on her reading and writing? It would certainly make it much easier to teach her!" He gushed to her mother.

Her mother, a bit confused, shook her head and simply told him that her daughter "must just be that smart! Because we haven't taught her any of that yet!"

And on her walk home with her mother, she stared down at the ground as she concentrated very hard on not stepping on her tail again, holding onto her mother's hands and humming a little song as she walked. Her mother glanced down at her.

"How was school, Akemi dear?" She asked. Akemi looked up in confusion, remembering that her mother had already asked her about school, and she had already told her she had a good day. Her mother was smiling, but her brows were pinched a bit in worry.

"It was good," Akemi nods as she answers the question anyway, a smile lighting up her face.

"Nobody stared?" She asked, concerned and speaking softly as if trying to coax the truth out of her daughter. Akemi blinked in confusion, dropping her smile a bit.

"Stared?" She parroted, tilting her head to the side the same way she knew her father did when he was asking a question. "I don' think so. I was busy learnin'."

Her mother smiled, and nodded, and that was that. They didn't speak about the topic again until her father brought it up the next day, when Akemi was standing in the gates for school again. Her father was here alone this time, her mother sleeping in at home, and before she can walk through the front doors he bends down at grasps her hand gently.

She turns around to look at him curiously.

"Akemi, my little hunter," he said soothingly with a small smile. She smiled at the familiar nickname and turned around to look at him, holding his hands with hers. "I want you to stick close to that nice lady there, okay?" He turns and points to one of the teachers – the woman with the crocodile face that Akemi had met just the other day. "She's very nice and will take very good care of you, okay?"

She nodded at him, seeing no reason to be confused or nervous - but, she had to admit, a part of her mind clicked when she realized he wanted her to stay nearby an adult with a heteromorphic quirk. With that out of the way, he grinned and pressed his forehead to hers, his tail swishing behind him a bit as he seemed to purr at her. She threw her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his chest, listening to the purr and letting out an odd croaking noise in return – he chuckles. She hadn't learned how to purr yet. She wanted to, so bad – for who wouldn't want to purr? – but it was so difficult to learn a language that wasn't spoken at all.

He stands up, hands her off to the nice teacher with the crocodile head, and walks off to go to work. She waves as he leaves, and he waves back.

And that was that.

The day afterwards, he shows her a video of All Might rescuing a hundred civilians, and Connie lurches up from the depths of their mind to have a metaphorical heart attack as she realizes what world, _exactly, _she had found herself reborn into.

_My Hero Academia._


	4. Examination

Review Responses: Another few reviews already! Thank you to everyone showing interest in this story, it makes me excited to write more of it for you! If I ever feel the need to respond to your guys' questions or remarks, I'll do it up here before the beginning of the chapter.

ShadowQueen46 – It's funny that you ask that question on chapter 3 xD She actually meets one of the main characters in this chapter! Hope you like who it is and how it goes down! She'll meet one other main character before we get to the show's plot as well, but that's a little bit aways from now.

Uuuuuuuhhhhh – First of all, that's a _wonderful _name. I counted out how many U's were in it so I could type it correctly lmao. Secondly, thank you for the compliments! I'm glad you're interested in the idea of a morally grey OC, I hope I portray her right! And I actually have plans for her quirk status... Think of like.. Tokoyami's quirk(s), and Koda's quirk(s) – and if you don't get what I mean now, you will by the end of the chapter!

Ahh, this is the longest chapter yet. Maybe to make up for the fact that it's been a while since I updated, haha... Word Document wouldn't open for the longest time, and so much of this chapter had been written already that I didn't want to have to just re-write it. I finally got it to give me my dang chapter, though! I think the ending is a bit rushed, but I wanted to end it quickly. Hrm...

Hope you enjoy it!

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For a while, Akemi desperately begged her parents to take her anywhere they went. Sometimes one of them would go shopping and leave the other at home, and she never used to mind it as it meant personal time with one parent. Now, she demanded she go with them and stomped and cried until they obliged. And though they warned her that they didn't like the new attitude she was developing, they usually complied with a smile anyway and a soft scolding.

She didn't mean to sound rude or demanding, truly, but after she learned that she existed in the same world as _All Might himself, _well, then there was no question about it. She _had _to know more. She had to go out, learn about the world personally, and meet more and more people. In her – _Connie's –_ old life, she had never watched the show often enough to consider herself a real fan of it, but she'd read the mangas up to certain points. All the details escape her, but she knew a handful of major plot points. She wondered to herself, would it be the same as it was in the show and manga? Or does she simply... exist in the world itself rather than the story?

During this time of learning, she also learned that her father's big, important job that they had been keeping a secret from her was that he was actually a pro hero himself – The Hunting Hero; Kuroneko. Calling himself "The Black Cat" wasn't the most original of names, for sure, but it was a name people respected either way. He was good at what he did, and everybody around knew it.

It wasn't the only thing she learned that tilted her personal world out of balance.

Not only was she in the very world where All For One fights One For All time after time, and not only was her dear father a hero himself that was known and respected throughout the city they lived in, she also learned that, where her family lived, heteromorphic quirks were frowned upon.

She didn't know why, and for a while her parents avoided the topic when she brought it up. But after enough time passed with her pestering them into answering, they finally let the cat out of the bag – so to speak.

Apparently this area they lived in was a popular place for thugs and criminals – but beyond that, the most common kind of criminal here were criminals with heteromorphic quirks. Big hulking bodies made it easy to break and take what they wanted, small lithe forms with multiple arms made it all the better to sneak about and steal multiple items at once. So her home district took this information to heart, and while there was little to no violence against heteromorphic quirked people – she had a feeling that if there had been violence against them, her parents would have never had children here – it was still painfully obvious once you got past the whole 'I exist in the same world as All Might' excitement.

She focused more on it, after that. There were hardly any teachers or staff in her kindergarten who had heteromorphic quirks, most of them being "normal people". The students as well. Most of the kids were the innocent little troublemakers you'd except four- and five-year-olds to be at this stage in their life, but there were the diligent few who had learned from their parents to avoid people like Akemi.

And wasn't that a sad thing? Akemi learned to be wary of "normal" people at the age of five.

During one class day, roughly a year after she had joined kindergarten in the first place and had solidly cemented herself as "the prodigy" of her classroom due to already knowing all of this information and playing it off as her being a very quick learner, a new student arrives.

A very familiar student.

A young girl around the same age as Akemi, maybe a few months to half a year younger. Akemi took one glance at her and decided, this was it, this was her new best friend.

Wild pink hair that curled around her face still round with baby fat, a lighter shade of pink for her skin tone, and golden yellow eyes with black sclera. The horns atop her head were big for her size, like a little puppy with big feet – she knew the girl would eventually "grow into" her horns.

The main reason for this being that this new girl was the only other child here that seemed "abnormal" – surely she would be ostracized or looked at oddly, like Akemi was, and Akemi didn't want her to have to deal with that alone. The other reason, perhaps the more obvious one, being that she immediately recognized this girl as a "main character" from the story.

So the day she arrived, when this pink girl introduced herself in front of the class with a big grin and a deep bow promising to make friends with every single kid in the room, Akemi jumped at the chance to meet her.

"Let's be friends!" Ashido Mina announced with her much better Japanese than Akemi could speak, a bright grin on her pink face. Akemi waved a hand high up in the air, a grin on her own face as well as she shouted in response,

"You can be my friend!" Then she patted the empty seat beside her. The teacher, the same man as Akemi had always had with the fingers that could stretch for several feet, nodded and patted Mina on the back, telling her to go sit beside Akemi. Mina bounded over with a smile and a skip in her step, plopping down beside Akemi and leaning over to immediately shake her hand excitedly.

"Hello! I'm Ashido Mina, you said we could be friends? Wow, that was easy! I thought it'd take some time to make a friend here! Thank you!" She spoke out quickly as she continued shaking. Akemi grinned right back, getting excited just from the other girl's excitement.

"Hello, Ashido Mina," she responds slowly, trying very carefully to pronounce each word perfectly, as if she could impress the girl with how good she could speak. "I'm Himura Akemi. It's nice to meet you! I like your quirk!" Akemi points to Mina's horns, smiling widely. Mina smiles wide for a moment too, then pauses and shakes her head at Akemi quickly.

"Oh no! This isn't my quirk!" She laughs as if it was a common mistake people made. Then she leans in close as if to whisper a secret. "My quirk is _acid! _Isn't that cool? I can melt things! My parents don't like it all that much, but it's a lotta fun to slide on it!" She rambles on about her acid quirk, and Akemi gapes in open confusion and, admittedly, a bit of admiration. She had almost forgotten through her excitement of this new world that, yes, there were people who had both a heteromorphic quirk and another, separate quirk ability.

"How d'you know?" She asked suddenly, nearly interrupting Mina's excited chatter. Mina paused, humming a quick, "Hm?" in confusion.

"Like," she explains herself, "How did you _fine' out_ that you could shoo' acid?" If Akemi was less confused and excited – she could only keep thinking to herself, maybe _I _have a separate quirk – she might have been a bit embarrassed at how she kept messing up her words. Her American accent still came into play when she spoke, despite her best attempts to get rid of it.

Akemi's parents had already, of course, explained that when most children are four years old they see a general doctor to see how their quirk was developing in their body, and then a specialized doctor who was specifically trained to help children find out about their quirks and how to use them. Akemi was already five-and-a-half years old and had yet to go to those doctors, her parents giving her the vague answer that they just hadn't been able to take her at the time and that she would go some time soon.

While Mina goes off on a tangent about how she found out and the chaos she started in her own house the day her quirk manifested, Akemi's thoughts wandered off elsewhere.

Later that night, after dinner with her parents, she finally brought up the topic of going to those quirk-specialist doctors that could help you with your quirks and identifying them, and her parents looked at her a bit oddly.

"Akemi dear," her mother began with a soft voice. "Your quirk is a physical one. We don't need to go to a doctor to see your pretty ears!" She leaned over and tapped the ends of Akemi's black feline ears, and she pouted a bit.

"But Mina had a phys'cal quirk _an' _a real one!" She tripped over a few syllables.

Her father frowned, not missing the way she called the non-heteromorphic quirk a "real quirk".

"You have a _real quirk_, Akemi," he said soothingly. After a moment of staring at his wife, as if a silent conversation was going on between their eyes, he smiled back down at Akemi and said, "But if you really want to, we can go see one of those special quirk doctors, alright?"

Akemi nodded, stuffing some chicken into her mouth and swallowing before saying, "Yeah! I really wan' to!"

Her mother sighed and her father smiled, and that was that. They went a week later, during the weekday when Akemi had a day off from school due to the pouring rain. The rain poured down steadily, and though it wasn't a harsh, scary storm, she still found herself feeling negative emotions as she looked at the pouring water. The last time she'd been in a rain storm –

_Blood, gunshots –_

_People see her pain, they gasp, they point and exclaim –_

_And they leave her there to suffer alone –_

– She cuts herself off, reminding herself that she was no longer a thirty-two year old woman. She had no reason to be afraid of the rain. So she turns away from the memories and reminds herself to play the part of the excited child, bouncing in her car seat excitedly, looking outside the windows of the car as her father drove, her mother sitting in the passenger seat with a little smile on her face as she watched her daughter through the rear-view mirror.

"Maybe I'll breathe fire!" Akemi says excitedly, then pointing to a man with reptile scales all across his body as they drove past him. "Like a dragon!"

"Don't point," her father chides her quickly. When she puts her hand down, he puts a smile back on his face and responds, "But maybe so." Her mother looked a bit concerned for a moment, and leaned over to whisper something to her husband. Akemi could probably hear what she was saying if she strained her ears a bit, but the last time she did that she got grounded for a few days because she had been disrespectful by eavesdropping. She hums a little tune to herself instead, kicking her legs back and forth.

They finish their little conversation, and Himura Katashi shakes his head, saying nothing as he continues driving. Himura Aiko leans back in her seat, and rests a hand on her lap, briefly tapping her thumb against her stomach. The rest of the ride is in silence.

They arrive at a tall building and Akemi looks at how high up the building went in wonder. Her father walks out and comes around to her side, holding out an umbrella against the pouring rain and helping her out of her seat.

"Papa, can you carry me in?" She asks shyly as she sits on the edge of the seat, unwilling to hop out in the rain. "I don' like the rain.."

He smiles at her, and she gives him her best "kitten eyes" as he called it – there was a theme here, if one couldn't tell yet – and he chuckles before leaning down and picking her up.

"Afraid of the thunder, are you?" He asks as he carries her in one arm, holding up the umbrella in the other arm as all three of them walk towards the building. Akemi shakes her head no.

"Not the thunder," she says indignantly. "Jus' the rain."

He looks a bit confused, as he knew she loved water – never before had Katashi seen a kitten _or _a child who loved bath time so much – but he simply nodded along and walked beside his wife through the parking lot to the front doors of the tall building.

"I'm sure you'll grow to love it one day," he says off-handedly. "Most kids grow out of their fears, and you're a brave little hunter, aren't you?"

Akemi grins at the familiar nickname and nods her head quickly. She _was_ brave, and she knew she shouldn't let past fears control her, but... something about the heavy rainfall reminded her so much of the violent death she'd been dealt that she couldn't help but feel a sense of trepidation as she watched it fall. She clutched her father tighter as they walked into the doctor's building.

They were told it was a short line today and didn't have to wait for long to be called up to their appointment, so Akemi simply busied herself with more people-watching as her parents filled out a few forms and talked with the receptionist behind the large oak desk.

There were a handful of people with heteromorphic quirks with injuries and wrapped up limbs, and Akemi frowns. She can't help but wonder how they must have gotten those injuries.

There was one little boy in particular who had a bandaged arm, sitting in a seat too big for him and swinging his legs back and forth. His skin was a shade of grey so dark it almost looked black, and the sclera of his eyes were a solid grey with his actual pupils being white. The black hair on his head was wild and messy, and it often came off of his body in small wisps as if it was smoke falling away from his body and dissipating in the air. It was the same for the rest of his body that Akemi could see – smoke and shadows. He sat beside a normal-looking older man who busied himself with reading a magazine the hospital had on the tables around the waiting room.

The boy finally notices her staring, and looks up at her with a shy look on his face. Akemi remembers what her father would tell her about staring, and she offers him a grin with teeth and a wave of her hand, her black tail flicking behind her. He seems surprised, and waves back with his non-bandaged arm.

Before their little meeting could go any further, her father grabs her hand and they begin walking towards the doctor's office.

"Let's go little hunter, I'm sure he'll be there when you get back," he grinned down at her, a twinkle to his golden irises. Her mother sighs dramatically as they walk down the hallway, being led by a nurse in blue scrubs.

"I can't believe our little girl is already looking at boys like that, Katashi," she pulls on his arm with a pout on her face.

They had yet to give Akemi "the talk" as all parents do eventually, but she knew what they were talking about due to her past knowledge on the topic. Akemi's face heats up a bit and she inwardly pouts at her parents, but she simply gives them a confused tilt of her head and asks what she must mean, careful to play the part of an innocent child.

They both laugh at her seeming naivety, and soon enough they're at the doctor's room.

"The doctor will be with you shortly, please wait right here," the nurse motions to a seat and an examining table in the room and walks right back out with a small smile and a wave to Akemi.

"Up we go," her father says as he picks Akemi up and drops her down onto the exam table, and she wrinkles her nose a bit at the sound of the table paper crinkling when she sits on it. Connie had been to doctor's offices before, had sat on these tables in her life, and she knew they weren't that loud – Akemi figured it must have been her enhanced senses making it seem louder than it was supposed to be. Her father sees the face she makes at the noise and he smiles at her sympathetically and taps her nose with one finger, whispering, "_It gets easier,_" before going to stand beside his wife who takes the seat beside the table to sit in.

Akemi swings her legs back and forth a bit as she looks around the room, letting her mind drift elsewhere.

The room was painted a nice, eye-pleasing sky blue color with puffy white clouds in the top corners of the walls. There were paintings of children playing – all skin tones and varying hair colors included, all children holding hands to show their love and friendship for each other. There were no heteromorphic-quirked kids painted on the walls, and Akemi looks away.

A doctor soon enters the room, and smiles down at Akemi as he shuts the door behind him.

The rest of the day at the doctors' office is nothing noteworthy, with the doctor asking plenty of questions, her parents answering them, and every now and again he would show her a toy or something to keep her entertained. She was plenty entertained, however, with simply trying to keep up with their conversation. Her Japanese had come a long way, but the bigger words tended to escape her - especially when they talked at ease with each other and didn't bother trying to slow down their words so she could understand.

From what she understood of their fast-paced conversation, he'd do various tests, take an x-ray of her foot for some reason, and then he would call them when the tests came back and he knew whether she had a quirk separate from her physical one. Afterwards, if she _did _have a different quirk, they could do different kinds of testing to find out what that quirk is specifically.

Her parents agreed, they took a few tests and the x-ray, the adults talked for a while longer, and that was that. She was in and out of the office maybe fifteen minutes later. While they talked to the receptionist at the front desk again, Akemi taps the wrapper on the lollipop she had been given. She looks around the front room and notices, again, the same boy from before. This time the adult he was with was talking to someone else, and the boy looked bored. He was holding a few papers that had some messy signatures on them, so Akemi figured he must have already been looked at by the doctors and was simply waiting to leave like she was. Akemi lets go of her father's hand and walks over to him.

"Hello," she waves at him with a smile. He looks shocked at her for approaching him, but waves back silently. "I'm Himura Akemi. Who're you?" She spoke slowly to properly enunciate her words. For a moment, he was silent and fidgeted with the wrapping on one of his arms, and Akemi briefly wondered if he even _could _speak - his face looked like a solid smokey grey, perhaps he didn't even have a mouth at all - but he responded when the man beside him encouragingly patted his back with a smile.

"Ah.. Domen Kurayura," he responds quietly, his white pupils peeking up at her shyly. Akemi can almost feel the waves of nervousness he gave off, so she offered him a bright grin, hoping to make him feel a little more comfortable. She held out the lollipop to him.

"You wan' a sucker, Kura-kun?"

The area on his face that Akemi would assume were his cheeks grew a bit darker at her nickname, and she thought that perhaps he was blushing. When he raised his hand to grab the lollipop from her, wisps of smoke came off his hands and disappeared in the air - it left no smell, no feeling of smoke at all - and his hands were warm like a furnace when he took the candy.

"What do we say, Kurayura?" The man - maybe his father? - asked him.

"Th-thank you, Akemi-san," he said with a small smile - it was nearly invisible on his face, but with her enhanced senses, she saw it easily. She heard her mother cooing in the background, probably watching the interaction, and Akemi blushed a little.

"No pro'lem, Kura-kun. You can call me Mi-chan if you wan'. You wanna be friends?"

The little boy looked shocked, but nodded his smokey head quickly. While they agreed to be friends, Akemi's parents came over and talked to the boy's father - exchanging information, laughing at how cute their kids were, setting up a play-date excitedly. Afterwards, her mother grabbed her hand and they walked out with Akemi waving goodbye to her new friend. He waved back to her, and her parents laughed together at their adorable daughter.

"My, you make friends very quickly, don't you, Akemi?" Her mother cooed down at her with a smile. The rain had come and gone, and Akemi had no problem walking alongside her parents back to the car.

Akemi hummed a little tune, and her parents whispered something back and forth to each other. Before she could ask what they were talking about, they had reached the car and her father was lifting her into the backseat.

"Akemi, sweet-heart," her father began while he buckled her into her seat. She caught on to his nervous air quickly, and looked at him with curious eyes. "How would you feel…" He paused for a moment, and looked to his wife with a nervous smile, like he didn't know how to continue. She laughed from the front seat and turned around to face them.

"Sweetheart, how would you feel if we had a baby? You could have a little brother or sister!" She said excitedly, a far-cry from the nervousness of her father. He stood there patiently, even after he had finished buckling her up, not moving around to his spot in the drivers' seat just yet. Akemi hesitated for a moment, then leaned forward in her seat with wide, excited eyes and an open mouth.

"A BABY?" She shouted, gripping the sides of her seat. Her father laughed and finally shut the door, getting into the front to drive home. Her mother nodded just as excitedly as her daughter, placing a hand on her stomach. Akemi gaped. They weren't even asking her for permission as she had first assumed - they were already…

She threw her hands into the air and laughed loudly. "I'M'ONNA BE A BIG SIS!" Her words mashed together in her excitement, and the air in the car changed wildly as everyone laughed and cheered together. Her parents were glad she was excited rather than upset - when they got home, they could properly celebrate and discuss things in further detail with Akemi.

However, when they got to their house, they found a familiar little child there waiting for them. Akemi gasped and ran up to Mina, energetic and excited from both the news of her parents having a child and from having gone to a quirk-doctor as she had been begging to for a while. She grabbed Mina's hands and jumped up and down, and though Mina had no idea what was going on, her excitement quickly caught on and they were both laughing and smiling together.

Until Mina explained to her that she was moving away and going to a new school. Akemi paused in her jumping, and looked at Mina with wide eyes, her excitement deflating. Her parents were inside, but her father stood in the doorway watching. He frowned when Mina explained that her parents were angry that other kids were making fun of her for the way she looked, and they had decided to move away.

"But… I haven' seen kids makin' fun of you," Akemi said quietly. Mina frowned with tears in her eyes, sniffling.

"It doesn't happen in school," she shrugged. Then she reached forward and hugged Akemi tightly. "I'll miss you, Mi-chan! You're such a good friend! I tried begging them to let me stay but they said we gotta go!"

Akemi feels a few tears in her eyes too as she hugs back. Mina was… Akemi's only real friend. She talked to other kids in her class sometimes, but mainly when they wanted to copy her work or ask her for help with a problem. The rational side of her mind told her that, perhaps the other kids were only being nice to her because they thought of her as a genius, and that if Mina had nothing to offer them per se… They wouldn't be nearly as kind towards her.

Mina stays while they have some sweets meant to celebrate the fact that Akemi's mother was pregnant, but afterwards they part ways with another tearful hug. Mina leaves, and Akemi looks at her empty seat in kindergarten with a thoughtful, sad look.

"Hey Mi-chan! Can I see what you got for your math homework..?" A random boy asks her. She wasn't familiar with him, but she knows he'd asked for her help once or twice before.

She stares at him for a moment, and simply slides her homework over to him with a mumbled, "Don't call me that."

She never saw Mina in her home-area again.


	5. Friendship

Review Responses: Okay, this chapter is mostly filler to settle a few things. Afterwards, we start moving through the years quickly, and the end of the next chapter is when she finally arrives at the main story. Thank you for being patient and waiting while I set up little Akemi's personal world!

This is also the longest chapter yet at almost 7k words. Woo!

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A handful of weeks after Mina moved away, they had finally gotten a call from the quirk-specialist doctor. Her father, on the phone, was shocked. Her mother came over and asked what the matter was, and they had a quiet, quick discussion with each other. Later that night, they sat her down and talked to her about her quirk. Her mother seemed happy to explain it to her, but her father was less than enthusiastic for whatever reason.

_"You have your very own super-power, sweetheart!"_ She had told her. Her father wasn't happy with that phrasing.

Self-healing, she was told. It wasn't anything big or exciting, nor a powerful quirk on its own, but Akemi was excited enough about it to make up for the small ability. Later, after her mother had laid down to sleep and Akemi and her father were cleaning dishes together, he had a quick talk with her about her quirk. He seemed a bit sad, and made sure to put an emphasis on how she should be proud of her heteromorphic quirk just as much as her healing quirk - about how it was just as valid and incredible. She took it all in stride, and nodded her agreement.

A few months into the new year, when Akemi is six years old, she finally asks her father to train her. Her mother is several months into her pregnancy at this point, and her father had been very busy lately with his job, caring for his daughter on his days off, and tending to his now very pregnant wife.

_"I want to fight like you, Papa!_" She had told him with a bright grin and determined eyes. _"I want to be a hero just like you!"_

It was only partially true. She did want to know how to fight - how to protect her family, and what few friends she had. She wanted to be able to hone her skills and use them to take care of those she truly loved. She had been reborn into a world where people are born with supernatural abilities and incredible powers, what chance did she have of living a good life with her loved ones if any random stranger with a ski mask could threaten her and her family?

But she had absolutely no intentions of becoming a hero.

_She had already been a hero - she had died for it._

She didn't want to be a hero, not again. For a while, she even began to detest the fact that her father was a "professional hero" - people who went out and did 'selfless acts' for money and fame. What right did they have, she thought, to demand that her father fight for them? She couldn't control what her father did, especially learning that he'd been doing it for a number of years before she had even been born, but, with any luck and a lot of training, maybe one day she could fight by his side. Improve his chances of coming home safely.

He looked down at her with surprise at first, then a fond sort of concern.

_"Akemi, dear, you don't need to be a hero to be like me…"_

How odd, she thought, that he would want to push her away from the work of being a hero. She was adamant about it thought, and he had eventually relented after a long talk with his wife. He promised to begin teaching her basic moves and how to raise her strength during the summer.

She began counting the days on the calendar.

After learning about her "real quirk" - her father got sad every time she used that phrase when talking about her healing powers - she had, admittedly, gotten a lot more reckless. When she played outside with her mother while her father was away at work, she would scramble up the rock piles by the garden and jump down - and while it wasn't a big leap, being about three feet up, it still made her mother worried every time she did it. She'd gotten scratched up once or twice, and would watch in amazement as it healed within moments.

It was never an immediate heal, but it was quick enough that she began to wonder just how much of a wound could be healed.

_If I were shot, alone, in the dark, would I survive it a second time around?_

_Would I die again?_

"Akemi, sweetheart!" She heard her mother calling for her from inside the house. Her parents had begun recognizing her enhanced senses little by little each day, and her mother no longer felt the need to go outside to call for her, knowing Akemi would hear it even if she was inside. Akemi's ears perked up, and she stood from where she sat on the grass watching a scraped knee vanish before her eyes. She smiled and ran inside.

"Hello, Mama!" She grinned brightly, proudly showing her sharp teeth. They were growing longer and sharper by the day. She had once heard her mother preach about how happy she was that her teeth grew in after she'd finished breastfeeding. Her father had laughed loudly and jovially, and Akemi pretended to not understand what they were talking about.

"Hello little kitten," the pregnant woman cooed happily. "It's almost time for the picnic. Do you want to help me carry it to the car?"

Akemi nodded her head excitedly, her short, wavy-curls bobbing with the motion. Her hair nearly reached her shoulders now, but she planned on asking for a haircut sometime soon - dealing with long curly hair was a nightmare.

She carried a bag of green apples to the car, shoving it into the backseat nearby where she sat. Ever since the hospital visit last year, her parents had gotten in contact with the shadow-smoke boy's parents and they had planned various activities together. Both sets of parents agreed that their children had become instant friends with each other and they were both perfectly happy letting their friendship continue.

After she brought out a bag of sweet bread with her mother carrying more items - of course Akemi was only given the light objects to carry - she strapped herself into the car and bounced excitedly while her mother walked around the side and got in at her own pace.

"Too slow!" Akemi complained energetically, kicking her legs back and forth. Her mother scoffed while she buckled herself in the front seat before the steering wheel.

"Hey, don't you dare insult a pregnant woman like that," Her mother jokingly scolded her. Akemi stuck her tongue out with a grin. With a roll of her mother's lovely green eyes, the car starts up and they're at the picnic in no time.

"Hey, hey, Kura-kun!" Akemi is shouting before she's even unbuckled from the car. The boy in question turns around to face her curiously, a shy smile on his face. Akemi had learned quite a bit about the boy since first meeting him a handful of months ago; she'd been so sad about Mina leaving that she spent as much time with Kurayura as she could, as if to make up for the loss of her only true friend.

He wasn't a very social boy, for one thing. His family life was happy enough, but he had some pretty extreme social anxiety when it came to strangers and he had a difficult time making friends with others. He tended to be very self-conscious about the way he looked, even though his parents tried to tell him he was fine the way he was. He felt nervous about the fact that his quirk was nothing like his parents'; both his mother and father looked "normal" and had quirks related to molding or bending the earth. Apparently he got his quirk - the shadowy body he had - from a great-grandfather that had a recessive gene for it. Thus, he ended up being the only person in his immediate family that looked the way he did.

He was two months younger than her; and though he was close enough in age to be going to the same school as her, he was home-schooled by his parents and a private tutor. He was a very intelligent boy; both in the grades he got with his studies, and in the creativity and talent he had when it came to tech and gadgets. He told her that he wanted to be a hero that specialized in cool tools and weapons, and even promised to build some things for her when they were all grown up together.

When Akemi had excitedly told him about how her father was going to start training in the summer, and that she wanted to be a hero when she was older to fight alongside him, he grew excited and asked if he could be a hero too. They'd promised to become heroes together and become an unstoppable crime-fighting duo.

She never told him about the way she felt about the hero profession, not wanting to crush his dreams.

"Hello, Mi-chan," he waved to her shyly. It took her a little while to get him to call her that; a cutesy nickname that she only let the closest of friends call her.

Their parents set up the picnic, and told them that they could run off and play together in the park nearby - though they were told to stay in range of their worried sights. Akemi grabbed the younger boy's hand and ran off to go play in the sandbox. He carried a sketchbook and a couple of pens and pencils with him. They had promised to decide their hero outfits and names today.

He settled down in the sand a few feet away from her, and she got to work with making a little mound of sand to sit on like a throne.

"I don't have a cool quirk, so I think I'd have to focus on being a great fighter if I want to be a hero," he spoke as he flicked through the scribbled on papers. He wasn't much of an artist, he told her, but he liked to design things. "But maybe I can have a lot of cool gear, home-made!"

Akemi smooshed down her little sand-throne and then made herself comfortable on it. "I think your quirk's cool, Kura-kun. Your hero name should be about shadows or somethin', maybe! And my hero name will be like my Papa's! Maybe…" she put a hand to her chin and hummed in thought for a moment. "Maybe somethin' like… Dakuhanta… that soun's cool, right?" She asked him excitedly, tail flicking behind her.

"Dark hunter?" He parroted curiously. "That sounds amazing! You could blend in with shadows and stuff, and be all silent and stealthy!" He beamed up at her before writing down a few notes hurriedly. "But you'd need lots of tools, too. Small stuff so it won't make lots of noise, but useful weapons to fight against villains.."

They spend almost the whole day discussing hero things together; Akemi noted that he became much more outgoing and excited when he spoke about designing things for the future, a far cry from his usual shy, nervous self. They took a small break to eat lunch with their parents, then ran off to play in the grass surrounding the park.

"Look Mi-chan, here's another one," Kurayura pointed to a small black bug on the side of the swingsets. Akemi dropped the small handful of dirt she had been poking at and ran over with a smile. "Don't get your skirt dirty," he advised her when she knelt down next to him to look at the small creature.

She smoothed back the black and pink skirt she wore and picked up the little bug.

"Look! He's cute!" She exclaimed.

"It's ugly," Kurayura argued with a flat tone.

"Don't insult him, he's _han'som_," She stuck her tongue out at him.

He didn't bother correcting her pronunciation of the word, instead rolling his white pupils with a small smile. Akemi grinned at him, glad he was getting more comfortable around her - comfortable enough to even joke around and mock each other, like friends should be able to.

Her ears twitch, and she hears a few voices a fair distance away from where they played. She looked over, and in the distance were five other children. One boy was on the ground, another boy standing in front of him protectively, three other boys standing around them in a threatening semi-circle. What looked like small, controlled bursts of flames were coming from the blonde boy's hands.

She could just barely hear how the fragile-looking kid with green hair was defending the boy on the ground. She frowned. Kurayura looked up curiously at her silence, and, seeing her frown at something in the distance, looked around to see what she was staring at. When he spotted it, his eyes went wide.

"They- They're bullying those other boys," he whispered. He looked over at Akemi with pursed lips and a worried look on his face, as if asking her what they should do. "A hero would help…" He mutters, unsure of himself.

Akemi looks at him, then back at the boys. She sighs and drops the bug on the ground, not bothering to stay and watch it scurry away before she stood up and started making her way over to the group of children. Kurayura looked at her with wide eyes, and hurriedly stood and chased after her.

"Hey!" She called out to the group a few feet away, seeing the blonde boy raise his arm like he was ready to punch. Everyone in the group turned to look her way, and Kurayura shrunk a bit under the weight of their gazes. He obediently followed Akemi anyway, shyly picking at his clothing.

"Eh? This doesn't concern you, go away," the blonde boy said with a frown. He looked around the same age as her - all of the kids looked around the same age, except for the one sniveling on the ground. He looked a year or so younger.

Akemi, now close enough to the group, stood in front of the blonde boy - directly in his way of the other two boys. The green-haired kid gasped at her in open shock. Kurayura hesitated, ever worried, but loyally backed her up as well, helping the kid on the ground to stand up. Akemi could hear her mother calling her name, but she was a fair distance away. Probably worried about how far her daughter had wandered.

"You a bully?" Akemi asked the blonde boy with a frown. He blinked at her, seeming a bit surprised that she would stand in his way. He got over his confusion quickly however, and narrowed his red eyes at her.

"Get out of my way, idiot, or you'll get the same punishment," he threatened, more controlled bursts coming from his palms that she could now see were small explosions. Must be his quirk then, she thought. She noticed one boy in the back with big red wings, and wondered why he would be hanging out with a couple of bullies.

_Maybe they aren't from around here,_ she thought._ Maybe there's no distance between regular quirks and heteromorphic quirks where they come from._

She took a breath in, smelled the smoke in the air from the small explosions, saw the sweat dripping from one boy's forehead, clearly not having expected to deal with more than one kid to bully, and looked at the main kid again. As it stood, they appeared to be outnumbered. Three bullies, four regular kids.

Akemi let her hands tighten into fists - although her father hadn't yet started training her to fight, she, with the knowledge of her healing quirk in mind, was willing to stand up to these kids anyway.

The action didn't go unnoticed by the blonde boy.

"Not gonna say anything?" He asked, irritated. He grinned then, and took a step forward. "Fine! You'll get the same thing as Deku here!"

"Wait, Kacchan!" She heard a voice call out from behind her.

Before she could understand who "Deku" or "Kacchan" was, he was swinging down at her with an open hand, as if he was about to slap her. She saw it approach and quickly took the two steps forward that separated them, holding her hands out to do nothing more than shove the boy over harshly. When her hands connected with his shoulders to push him over, his open palm seemed to glow for a moment - a loud noise, a bright light, and a burning sensation on her shoulder happened all at once. Kurayura gasped and called out to her.

She cried out in pain and heard her mother shouting her name as the adults began rushing over. Her shoulder stung - not badly enough that she would need to see a doctor, but bad enough that it brought a wetness to her golden eyes. The blonde boy landed on the grass on his hands and looked up at her, surprised that she pushed him over. Then he looked furious, and stood back up, preparing to hit her with another burst of fire, shouting something about her being in his way - but his friends are pulling him back and worriedly telling him that adults were coming and they needed to leave.

Akemi wiped at her eyes furiously, determined to not cry, and launched herself forward to hit him again._ Strong, strong, I need to be strong,_ she chanted in her head when she swiped at him. A few of his blonde hairs were cut from her short claws, and he pushed himself out of his friends' grasp to fight back.

No way was he going to run away while she was still fighting.

Instead of another blast, he let his fist swing down and punched her across the face. She fell backwards, bringing down Kurayura with her. The other bullies ran away in fear of getting caught doing something wrong, but the blonde boy stayed, determined not to lose to this stranger. He stood over her as she brought an olive hand up to rest on her stinging cheek, tears in her eyes as she looked up at him.

"Remember this! Remember that you_ lost!_" He shouted at her, a smokey smell coming from his palms where he revved up another explosion.

Before he could hurt her anymore, Kurayura's father arrived and whacked him on the back of his head - not hard, but just enough to scold him for his violence - and Akemi's mother crouched down in the grass beside her, worrying over her. The blonde boy rubbed the back of his head, angrily shouted something at Kurayura's father, then turned and ran off in the direction of his "friends".

Akemi watched him run, sniffling a bit at the pain.

"Are you okay, Akemi?" Her mother asked worriedly, a hand reaching up to touch her. Akemi winced when her mother's hands came in contact with her shoulder, and when she looked down, she realized the blue blouse she had been wearing was scorched where the boy had made contact with her. She stood up and wiped some grass and dirt from her skirt, nodding at her mother.

Kurayura busied himself with his parents, telling them all about how scary the whole encounter was and oh, how brave Akemi was to stand up to the bullies and save the two boys-

At the mention of the boys, Akemi turned around to find them. The boy that had been on the ground had run off a while ago after Kurayura helped him up, but the green-haired kid was still there. He looked at her with wide, dark eyes full of shock and admiration. She sniffled once more, wiping some dirt off of the palms of her hands.

"You 'kay?" She asked him.

He opened his mouth, but when he failed to say anything, simply nodded his head excitedly, the same look of admiration in his eyes as before. He looked at her burnt clothes and the red mark across her cheek where she'd been hit, and his eyes went even wider than before when she felt it begin to heal.

He opened his mouth and finally managed to speak. "That was amazing! Who-"

"Can we go home, Mama?" Akemi turned to her mother. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Kurayura already walking off back to the picnic area with his parents. "I wan'a see Papa."

Her mother pursed her lips, worriedly looking from the red mark on her daughter's cheek slowly fading away, over to the boy with green hair who she had clearly "saved". She looked like she wanted to say something, but shook her head and smiled softly at her daughter.

"Of course, sweetheart. Let's go home," she spoke comfortingly, laying a gentle kiss on her forehead.

Her mother grasped her hand and began walking off back to the picnic area as well to clean up and head home. Akemi looked back at the boy with green hair - standing alone in the middle of the grassy area, looking over at her with wide, astonished eyes.

She went home without him learning her name. She didn't see him again the next time they went back to the park.

Later that summer, she began training with her father. He tells her that she has the same natural instincts that he does and he's proud of her, sure that she'll make a great hero some day. A few days into training, her mother goes into labour and gives birth to her younger siblings; a baby boy that they name Himura Isamu. He looked like a near photocopy of their mother - dark skin, bright green eyes, and little wisps of wavy brown hair - but with their father's freckles and cat quirk. When Akemi sees him, she reaches her hand over and stares in awe as he grabs her finger and yawns. Her parents laugh and talk about how great of a big sister she'll be.

Her mother often sits in the backyard with Isamu in a baby carrier or in her lap while Akemi and her father train together. He holds back on her, of course, never wanting to hurt her. Once when Akemi tells him that he doesn't need to hold back because of her healing quirk, he pushes her over and she scrapes the palm of her hand on the ground. When she pretended to cry, he immediately crouched down and began apologizing, and her mother laughed loudly at the sight. Isamu, not understanding what was going on but cheered on by his mother's laughter, laughed as well.

Soon, she graduates first grade and they celebrate with a little party. She files the childish graduation paper away in her bedroom proudly. Her father finally lets her see what his pro hero outfit looked like, and while most of it was exactly what she expected from a hero named The Black Cat (all dark colors, black armor, gloves, knee-high boots, the whole nine-yards), the dark fox mask he wore came as a surprise. She asked him why he chose a fox mask over a cat mask, and he sheepishly admitted he simply thought it looked cooler. The next time she hung out with Kurayura, she told him to add a black fox mask to her hero outfit design.

Almost a whole year had passed in a somewhat repetitive fashion.

Her father went to work in his hero outfit, she spent the day with Isamu and her mother - sometimes she would keep him entertained while her mother napped nearby - and they would make dinner together when her father came home. She sat by the baby's highchair, telling him how good the vegetables were and how he should eat up to grow big and strong despite the fact that her mother kept telling her that he couldn't eat solid food yet.

Then on his days off, her father would spend the entire day training Akemi. She got better over time, and often Kurayura would come over to watch her train. He had decided that, since he wasn't interested in fighting much, perhaps he would simply be a tech hero. Sometimes he would sleep over and have dinner with them. He quickly grew to be her closest friend, their parents becoming friends as well and often joking that you could find one wherever the other went.

She still was often regarded as a genius, or prodigy, in her classes. Even her parents seemed impressed by her smarts, and Kurayura often boasted about how he once got a higher test score than she did. She never made any more friends in her school, simply existing near the other children when they asked for her answers or needed help with a problem.

It went this way for a long while. Father went to work, Akemi went to school, she came home and spent the day with her brother and Kurayura, and when her father came home they trained for an hour or so before they made dinner together. She went to sleep knowing that her parents were proud of her, her best friend was always by her side when she needed him, and her little brother looked up to her as a hero already.

During the next summer, after Isamu turned two years old and she graduated second grade and moved on to third grade, something in her pattern changed. A chain in her link of events broke, messing up the content, disrupting the happy, satisfying life she'd made for herself.

Her father went to work, Akemi went to school, and she came home, expecting another day with her brother and training with her father.

Instead, there was a black car in her driveway that she didn't recognize, and when she walked into her living room, she found her mother crying on the couch with Isamu in his crib. A strange man that she had never met before sat on an arm-chair in front of her mother, frowning and looking down at his knees.

"Mama?" Akemi asked curiously, a worried look on her face. Her mother continued crying into her hands, and the strange man turned around to see her. His dark hair was long and messy, his facial hair short and unkempt, and his eyes were half-lidded and seemed bloodshot. The moment his eyes landed on her, they seemed to fill with shame.

Akemi walked around the man cautiously, as if afraid he would try to grab her if she moved too close, and ran up to her mother with wide eyes.

"Mama, are you 'kay? Did he hurt you?" She asked quietly, reaching out to her mother. She suddenly seemed to realize Akemi was there, and let out a loud sob that racked her body. Akemi's heart ached, and before she could ask what was wrong again, her mother reached out and held her in a close embrace to her chest. Tears fell on Akemi's bright shirt, soaking into the fabric in a way that briefly reminded her of rain.

The man said nothing.

"Mama," Akemi whispered, a dawning kind of fear leaking into her voice. Akemi, an innocent little girl, knew nothing about what could possibly be going on - but an experienced woman's consciousness that lay dormant in her mind knew. It knew. "Mama, where's Papa?"

Her mother cried.

The funeral was held two weeks later.

_"He died fighting for his people,"_ they told her with a comforting tone. _"He died defending civilians and saving lives."_

_"He fought to the very end."_

_"He was very brave and fought hard."_

_"Lives were saved because of his sacrifice."_

She thought back to the rain - to the familiar echoes of a painful memory that she hadn't thought about in years. She thought about the civilian being hurt, thought about the villains attacking an innocent woman, thought about her interference that saved the woman's life. She thought about the death she was dealt.

_Left to die alone, after saving the life of another._

_They saw her pain and ignored her, so sure someone else would arrive to help her._

She thought about her father. She wondered if he died alone, too. She wondered if the people around him ran away while he fought alone, saving the life of a civilian who didn't care about him.

"I worked with him," the same messy haired, dark eyed man said to her at the funeral, the one who had broken the news to them. The only person who didn't start a conversation with an apology and his condolences. "He was a friend."

And that was all he said to her. She turned around and walked away. Kurayura saw her leaving and followed her out.

"Mi-chan," he called to her gently as he followed her. He was wearing a black suit and a white tie, Akemi wearing a black dress and a neat black bow in her hair that she still had yet to cut. It'd grown so long now, past her shoulders.

"I'm goin' to the park," she responded to him without turning around. It was uncomfortably warm outside from the summer sun, and the black attire she wore only made the heat worse, but she didn't care. Kurayura followed her out in a hurry, asking her questions that she didn't bother to hear nor answer. Eventually he stopped asking anything at all and simply followed her in silence.

When she arrived at the park, she saw a familiar blonde head of hair.

She hesitated at the sight of him, growing angry at the back of his spiky blonde head, but ultimately chose to ignore him and walked over to the big tree her father helped her climb when she was younger.

_"You'll do lots of climbing as a hero one day, little hunter,"_ he'd told her with a smile full of sharp teeth. She walks over to the thick trunk of the tree, reaching a hand out to touch the scratchy bark. When Kurayura caught up to her, she began to climb.

"I'm.. not so good at climbing, Mi-chan," he mumbled half-heartedly. She ignored him again and kept climbing. By the time she was halfway up the giant tree, she heard an annoyingly familiar voice calling up at her.

"Oi, kitty! What are you doing here? This is my park, y'know!" The blonde haired boy spoke. He seemed to only just notice they were here and already decided it was an affront to his dignity. He beat her, after all - so how dare she come back here?

If Akemi weren't angry, she'd probably be surprised that he even remembered her from the one time they'd met and fought over a year ago.

"W-wait," she heard Kurayura pipe up shyly from the base of the tree where he waited for her. "She just-"

"Shut up, smoky," the blonde haired boy brushed him off as he neared the tree. With that, Kurayura's brittle confidence shattered and he backed away nervously, looking up at his grieving friend in concern. He wanted to be there for her, but she seemed adamant on being alone right now - her back turned to both of the boys, she held onto a branch as she stared at the sky quietly.

_Did he die just like I did? _She found herself wondering._ Left to fend for himself? When did they find his body? Right after he'd died? Or was he cold and alone for the night before someone called it in?_

She heard, in the back of her mind, her friend below her talking in a quiet, quick pace to the blonde haired boy, and the other boy respond aggressively.

When she hears a small explosion go off, she finally looked down at what was going on behind her.

"J-just, leave her alone-!" Kurayura said, his words much more confident than the tone he spoke in. Before his sentence was finished, the blonde boy was raising his hand and letting a few sparks fly again.

"I said shut up!" He shouted, angry that the other boy wasn't listening to him.

She narrowed her eyes, all the anger of her father's - _of her_ \- unjust death bubbling to the surface. She turned so she was facing the two boys, and leapt down. She lands heavily on her feet beside them. Kurayura jumps in surprise at her sudden appearance, his white eyes wide and his hands desperately grabbing the arm of the boy holding his tie threateningly. The blonde boy turns and levels a glare at her when she lands.

"What, now you're interested in-" He didn't get to finish his condescending sentence before Akemi rushed forward with an angry shout and caught him around the midsection, tackling him to the ground. They both landed in the dried out grass heavily, the dying plant life prickling their exposed skin wherever it touched.

He shouted something as he went down, immediately grabbing at her arms in an attempt to get her off of him. Kurayura began saying something, asking her what she was doing. Despite the blonde boy's attempts to push her off of him, she pushed his arms away from her and scrambled to hit him - to hurt him.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew it was wrong to take her anger out on him, but when she thought about how much she'd been hurt - _her past life, her death, the way other children would stare at her in school, the way adults would tell their kids to stay away from 'her kind', the fact that this society had demanded her father fight and die for them, leaving her and her brother without a father, leaving her mother broken and without her husband_ -

She couldn't help but think, _why should I be the only one suffering?_

She straddled his stomach and tried to scratch at him with her short claws. When she was able to barely scrape at the skin of his cheek, his eyes go wide then narrow in fury. Sparks ignite on the palm of his hands, and before she can move, he's burning her shoulders in an attempt to get her away from him, create some distance.

He's young, she thinks, but he's _smart._

She cries out in the familiar kind of pain she'd felt over a year ago when they first met, falling back in the grass to escape the burning heat. Kurayura is at her side in an instant, hands on her back and arm, trying to help her up. He's calling her name in fear, tears in his bright eyes, but she's only focused on the boy quickly getting to his feet in front of her. He bares his teeth at her, and though they're nowhere near as sharp as hers, she feels the challenge in the expression all the same. She growls and pushed Kurayura off of her, already feeling her wounds healing slowly.

"What's _wrong_ with you?!" The boy shouted at her, hands sparking again in anticipation of another attack.

_What's wrong with you?_

_Why do you look like that?_

_Why can't you just be normal?_

She screams, "THERE'S _NOTHIN'_ WRONG WITH ME!" And lunges again. He aims another hit at her, one palm braced in the palm of his other hand as he aims his explosion at her. This time, however, she's had training. She gets down on all fours and dodges; leaping the moment his explosions go off above her head. She swipes at him again, and when he avoids her claws, she reaches up with her other hand to punch him across the face. His nose is bleeding.

He staggers a few steps back, readjusts, and shouts in anger as he charges towards her. They collide again; this time she lands on her back and he's standing on her arms to keep her defenseless. He punches her in the gut once, his hands sparking again before-

Kurayura charges over and pushes him over, crying helplessly and looking at the scene with wide eyes. While the blonde boy desperately gets his feet beneath himself again, Kurayura grabs Akemi's shoulders - she hisses in pain - and he's trying to get her to stand.

"We have to go, Mi-chan! Let's just leave!"

She struggles in his grasp, but despite the fact that he's younger than her, he is still bigger and keeps her in his arms so she can't lunge at the other boy again. She doesn't realize she's crying, but she looks at the beaten up looking boy across from her and she shouts,

"I'M _NOT_ RUNNIN'," she screams in a loud, desperate tone of voice. "I'm _NOT RUNNIN' FROM YOU!"_

He doesn't follow her as she's dragged away crying by Kurayura, but he stands there with a bloodied nose and tears in his eyes too, shouting at her just the same about how _'you're running, you lost the fight, you left first, I clearly won.'_

When they're off the playground, she shakes her arms out of Kurayura's grasp and sniffles, wiping at the blood on her cheek from where it'd been scraped in the dry grass.

"I can walk," she sniffles again, head down, not looking at the taller boy. He is back to his nervous, shy self. He waits while she takes several steps toward home before he finally begins following her again. His suit is a little messy from the initial confrontation with the other boy, but otherwise Akemi is the only one who really looks beaten up.

Her dress is ruffled, covered in dirt and bits of grass. The bow in her hair fell out a while ago and Kurayura carried it in his hands nervously. Her hair was a mess, messier than it usually was with the wild curls and waves. Her face was dirty and bloody on one cheek, her knees were scraped and there was blood on the one hand from where she'd swiped at the other boy with her claws.

When she arrives back at her home, she finds herself feeling much meeker than before. She was nervous to appear the way she was to others; she wondered if they would say she looked like an animal. A few cars were missing from the area, and she knows most of the friends who had stopped by to lend their comfort to her family had left already. When she entered the house slowly and with her head down, she saw there were very few people left. Her mother was in one corner, talking to a few long-distance relatives, holding a handkerchief to her eyes.

The only one who noticed her enter was the same man from before; messy hair, tired eyes. She finds that she's starting to hate him. She hates how he looks at her and seems to know what happened in one glance. She hates how he doesn't look at her with pity like everyone else did; he had only shame in his eyes.

She narrowed her golden eyes at him and turned, stomping off upstairs to her room.

Next week, the family her father died to save visited her home. She doesn't leave her room to greet them.

* * *

((That's the end of the chapter! Hope you enjoyed. Reviews are greatly appreciated, even a simple hello brighten my day!))


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